We All Have a Story! Here's Mine. The Autobiography of Maurice Chandler

By Maurice Chandler

This E-Book is a version that details the life of Maurice Chandler. The author tells a compelling story about his life growing up and overcoming many obstacles. This story takes you on an emotional rollercoaster with many laughs, sorrows, and suspense. The author does a magnificent job detailing his eventful life which will keep the reader engaged.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maurice Chandler
• Release date: Nov 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988842316

Book preview

Introduction

My name is Maurice Chandler, AKA Reece. I grew up in Camden, which is a small city in southern New Jersey. I never thought in a million years that I would be writing a book. As the years passed, I have decided to share my story with the world. We all have a story. Hopefully, the ups and downs of my life’s journey will help inspire or scare straight those who could relate.

Unlike many of the families on the block we were one of the few that had a two-parent household for a period: Mom (Mae), Dad (Leon Sr.), my brother (Leon Jr.), and my sister (Kelia). We didn’t have much of anything, and I had a hard time accepting that. I would always question why my family were the have-nots, never having the essentials we needed to survive. At a young age, I started making decisions that got me into some trouble, and as I got older, those decisions were calculated risks I felt I had to take in life to survive.

My parents were very unpredictable. My dad was dealing with some demons. Some days it was a pleasure to see him. On other days, everyone in the house walked on eggshells around him. Meanwhile, my mom was dealing with her own issues, worrying about how she was going to feed her kids, pay her bills, what time my dad would be coming home, and just finding time for herself. My parents were young and inexperienced at the time we were born, trying to cope with the struggles of life. Naturally, their stress had an impact on the entire household.

In this book, I want to share my life story, explaining how I had to overcome the odds and many obstacles that were put in my path. The struggles I endured in life were heartbreaking, disappointing, and straight up scary at times. Whether I went to bed hungry or didn’t have any clothes to wear, I often wondered what my purpose was on earth. I second-guessed my reasoning for being alive on many occasions, but I never gave up. I continued to fight.

Coming from one of the poorest cities in the United States, not many of us were ever supposed to make it out. We were not meant to achieve our fairytale dreams of adulthood that we had as kids. With me growing every day from a child to a man, I had no other choice but to take an inventory of my life along with the lives of the many people who were living with me and around me. We all were in survival mode. Some people made more drastic moves to stay alive than others. Names, places, and details have been altered to protect the privacy of the many people I encountered during my life’s journey.

Chapter 1 - How it Started

In 1971, the poverty-stricken city, Camden, NJ, was a walk over the bridge to and from Philadelphia, PA. Camden was transforming from a predominately White city to one primarily made of Blacks and Puerto Ricans. There were still a lot of White store owners in the city, mostly Italians, Polish, and Jewish owned the mom-and-pop corner stores, pizza shops, bread shops, and supermarkets. When the Whites were moving out of the city completely in the later 1970’s through 1980’s, the Puerto Ricans were the ones taking over the corner stores and pizza shops while the Blacks were not getting the capital for economic advancement as others would get when they moved into the city to open a business. This is the world I was born into on the late summer day of August 26th, 1971.

My dad Leon R. Chandler Sr. was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the youngest of Lucille and Caesar Chandler’s five children. My dad came to New Jersey at the age of 2. He grew up in Camden on Kaighn Avenue before moving to Federal Street, in the same house where his mom and my grand mom would babysit me and my siblings along with my cousins. My grandfather Caesar Sr. was a sharecropper in South Carolina before he came to New Jersey from Charleston. When my grandparents moved up north. My uncle Oke, Caesar, and Aunt Bernice were the only kids that migrated up north. I never met my grandfather (dad’s father) because he passed away before I came into this world. My dad was a very stern, disciplinary man who understood the importance of family because he always made sure the house was kept up and everyone was doing what they were supposed to do to keep the house in order.

My mom was born in Dillon, South Carolina to Samuel and Ella Carmichael. Both of my mom’s parents were sharecroppers who worked in the field growing fruits and vegetables along with raising chickens and hogs. At a very young age, my mom learned how to survive differently than the way my siblings and I had to grow up. She and her family had to slaughter hogs to make ham, pork chops, hot dogs, and sausages for themselves. My mom grew up in the South and lived in a house with no running water. Drinking, cooking, and bathing water came from an outside pump. She also experienced the joys of using an outhouse before she came accustomed to having running water up North. Ninth out of ten children, she had five brothers and four sisters. Aunt EuthaMae, Aunt Menthelee, Uncle Samuel William, Uncle Bill, Uncle Jim, twins Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Cousar, Uncle James, Mom, and Aunt Shirley.  At eleven years of age, Mom moved up to Camden, New Jersey, with her parents and younger sister, Shirley. Aunt Menth Lee (Mutt) and her son John also moved in with them. The other much older siblings moved to Patterson, New Jersey, or New York City. Grandma Ella passed away when my mom was 16 years old, and Grandpa Samuel passed away 5 years afterwards. Mom had to grow up fast without any guidance from her parents, and that was what she did. Losing both parents spawned the mental depression that plagued her for many years.

She met my dad while attending church in 1964. My dad moved in with my mom and her family on Chestnut Street, downtown Camden, when she was 18 years old, and that’s when they married in 1966. Leon Jr. was born in November 1968 when my mom was 21 years old, and my dad was 24 years old. Kelia came along in July 1970, and then I came a year later in August 1971. I know my ass was an accident, but I am happy my dad let my mom keep me. They didn’t have money for an abortion. The world would have to deal with its new gift—ME!

My home was a duplex owned by my parents on Rand Street in East Camden. We lived in the downstairs apartment and rented out the upstairs.

As far back as I can remember, my parents were always working. My mom worked at Campbell Soup company. When my dad returned from the Vietnam war, he was employed at Conrail company. It seemed like he worked his entire life. I am not sure if some of his bad habits—getting drunk and smoking weed—started before or while he was in Vietnam. Whenever he had a few extra dollars in his pocket, he would come home drunk. Dad was a hard worker who would get up and go to work every day. I believe he and his buddies felt as though they deserved a drink or two when they got off work. He drank cheap wine, liquor, and/or beer. Me and my siblings didn’t know he smoked weed until we were much older in life. Watching my dad drink or come home drunk every day had become our normal reality. Although we didn’t understand the aftereffects from his drinking, we accepted it. Some days he would laugh, while other days he would be mean where we didn’t know if we should hide under the beds or call the cops. My mom and dad always argued. We were too small and young to sit back and dissect why they would argue all the time. We just wanted it to stop.

I never knew what my parents did at their respective jobs, nor did I care. As a kid, I only wanted to have the necessities in life and games to play. They never sat us down and told us what they did at work. I am sure if I would have asked, they would’ve responded with why do you want to know? It isn’t like we were a normal family having family talks around the dinner table. First off, we had a small kitchen. The glass table was pushed against the wall with four chairs around it. Kelia and I would sit in the middle chairs next to each other facing the dirty wall plastered from the food we threw against it, and Leon sat on the corner to the right of me. A chair with trash and papers piled up on it stood at the other corner of the table. Mom and Dad always ate in the living room, holding their plates in hand while eating. Once they finished their food, they would always call me or one of my siblings to take their plate into the kitchen, ask for us to fill up their cup with water or juice, then wash the dish. They didn’t even get up to change the channel on the television. Kids were the remote controls going up to the television to change the channel. I guess they were tired from working all day, so they didn’t feel as though they needed to get up.

My childhood was marked by physical and financial challenges. I was born with genu varum, more commonly known as bow-leggedness. We all know that bow-leggedness is a gift and a curse. They say a lot of nice things about bow-legged guys. At this time in no way did I think about the gifts from being bow-legged. as I got older, I would hear women talk about how bow-legged men pack nice male genitalia. My case was so severe that it was going to hinder my growth. My mother’s insurance didn’t cover treatment. Thank God, she did her research and found Shriners Hospital for Children – Philadelphia, which to this day, provides care for children at little to no cost to parents. I had to get both of my legs broken and corrected so I could grow into the man I needed to be. The doctors informed my mother that I’d have both of my legs in a cast for several months until my legs healed. They also told her it was good that she got this done at that time since my bones were still forming in my young 3 years old body. The doctors mentioned that I would grow to be roughly 6’0" tall, and they were correct. It’s crazy how they can predict bone measurements at such a young age. I am the tallest in my immediate family.

I’m sure my disability took an emotional and financial toll on my parents. As I got older, I also grew to appreciate that they cared enough to invest the time needed to get my legs straightened out. Unfortunately, there were plenty of other families around the neighborhood that had similar issues. They didn’t do what was necessary to rectify the problem. I remember this kid who lived around the corner from me named Antwan, who also had some kind of syndrome. He walked around with a plastic bag he’d defecate or piss into. I found out later that that plastic bag had a name–colostomy bag. Antwan’s legs were severely bowed which caused him to walk side to side. We all knew about his situation, but we never clowned him directly. He could not play any sports or do anything like normal kids. Now, we did joke about the piss smell amongst each other and not to his face, because we probably would’ve hurt his feelings, but it was just the usual Antwan’s aroma that we came to know. That was a very sad situation. Antwan’s parents probably didn’t have the money, insurance, or the information to get his legs fixed. Despite all the medical issues, we accepted Antwan as he was. Nobody was going to bother him.

Being poor humbles a kid in many ways by diminishing self-esteem and confidence. Small talk with the kids on the block left me feeling out of place. I couldn’t talk about having many clothes, lots of food in the house, washing clothes, getting a fresh haircut, etc. We all were poor in the neighborhood. It seemed as though the levels of some surpassed others. All the kids would come out discussing the things we didn’t have. I may go outside and talk to my friends about how it’s no food in my house, then Barry across the street would say his electricity has been off for two days, then Alvin would come down the street and mention they had no water or food.

We had no washer or dryer in our home. The laundromat was about four blocks away. My parents didn’t take our clothes to get washed on a regular basis for whatever the reason: lack of money, laziness, or just said to hell with it. It was normal for me to have dirty clothes. At times, we had to wash our clothes in the tub with the same bar of soap we used on our bodies. This was a lifestyle I could not get used to. It was hard to even open your mouth with confidence about anything, especially if girls hung around. I looked like a complete dirt bomb, a name some of the kids called me. How in the hell can I feel confident about anything when my appearance is worse than a bum on the streets? We all know the saying, You look good then you feel good. It was the opposite for me. I wasn’t looking good, so rest assured, I wasn’t feeling good about myself.

My family was not the only family living in our apartment. There were so many roaches in there that at one point we thought they owned the house and paid the bills, as if we were the ones invading their space. Some carried eggs or left remnants of already hatched eggs throughout the house. We dared not keep food on the table and had to start storing cereal in the refrigerator which came about from us seeing the roaches on the cereal in a bowl after pouring from the box. I hated roaches, and so did my family. We found roaches in our sneakers and shoes. When company came over, we wished, and prayed that the roaches stayed away in the cereal, our shoes, or behind the television until company left. Of course, it never worked out that way. They ran across the television, crawled on the walls, and some fell from the ceiling, making sure that our guests saw them. We had to play it off many times as if we were shocked ourselves seeing the roaches. Telling our company Excuse me while we took off our shoes to smack the roach dead on the wall. How embarrassing!

When my dad purchased his Chrysler Cordoba, no one else drove it but him. Mom either rode the bus or waited for Dad to drive her around. I never saw Mom driving Dad’s car. When my mom took me to my follow-up doctors’ appointments for my legs, we took the bus. I don't know if that was because my dad didn’t allow my mom to drive his car, or because their schedules conflicted.

The lack of finances in our home played a big role in the way our days went. My parents hated taking us to the doctor’s or to the dentist. I guess it was because they had to take off work which meant no pay or losing a vacation day. If that’s the case, I don’t know why they would be upset. It wasn’t like we went on any family vacations. And if they had to take us to the doctor because we hurt ourselves doing dumb stuff, we had to hear their mouth all the way to and from the office. We could be in the waiting room and my mom or dad would be complaining about us not cleaning up our bedroom or bringing up stuff like the dishes not being washed in the sink. This made me wonder whether they cared about our reasons we were at the doctor’s office in the first place.

While my parents were at work we would often get dropped off at my grand mom’s (Dad’s mom) house so she could watch us. She lived alone in her three-bedroom house on federal street. Sometimes while we were there, my cousin Cals would also get dropped off by his dad my uncle Caesar so my grand mom could watch him as well. My mom and dad never gave a bag of lunch or dinner for us to eat while we were there because my grand mom always provided for us. She would give us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soup, or whatever else she had available in her home for us to eat. Cals didn’t have to worry about any of those choke sandwiches because his dad would bring him a cheesesteak sandwich or something from McDonald’s. I remember looking at him eating those fresh, hot fries and that juicy burger while my mouth salivated. We never said anything while this was going on, but if my stomach could talk, there would have been some loud shouting going on in that house. (Cals still denies that this happened, but this is the way I remember it).

My grandmom would make stewed chicken every day for dinner. She always made her chicken, and for dessert, she made her coconut cake from scratch. All the family talked about her famous coconut cake. I knew my parents were on their way to pick us up soon as that stewed chicken aroma saturated the air. We wouldn’t stay to eat grandmom’s dinner because dinner was the only meal that we always ate at home. My grandmom stuck to her pattern.

Kelia and I would often voice our frustrations about our living conditions, questioning why we were always without water or electricity. We often wondered what in the hell Mom and Dad were doing with their money. Then there were times I would go across the street to my friends Barry or next door to Louie’s house and see they had simple items in their house like paper towels, napkins, and snacks. Their homes were clean, full of furniture. Those items were a luxury to me. Seeing how neat some houses were and how the cabinets and refrigerators were fully stocked with food, I could not help thinking how different this was from the way my family lived. We rarely had breakfast in my house and had to rely on the breakfast being served at school. From the time I woke up in the morning, I looked forward to getting lunch at school. It was normal everyday life to be hungry all day without a snack in the house.

There was a convenience store on Marlton Pike in East Camden named Famous. It was owned by two older White people who allowed my parents to buy groceries on credit until they got paid. In addition to getting food on credit from Famous, my brother and I would get haircuts on credit from Mr. Jimmy’s barbershop. We were only getting haircuts maybe once or twice a month. Money was very tight in my house. It was very embarrassing going up to the man at Famous or Mr. Jimmy the barber asking for credit, but it had to be done if we wanted to eat and look presentable.

I wanted more of what I saw other people had, but getting it was a different story. I wanted my mom and dad to do better about giving us more things. They left me confused when I would hear them say, I don’t have money for this or money for that. I would see them on payday counting rolls of cash like they were selling drugs or something. I thought to myself, there goes some money right there so make something happen, PLEASE! They couldn’t because much of the money they were counting on payday was strictly for bills, and there was very little to spare. My parents were making just enough money to get by. We didn’t have a closet full of clothes, and our sneakers were completely run over and looked like we got them out of the trash. There was nothing funny about our situation.

Having holes in the bottom of your sneaker where your foot is touching the ground and sock poking through the holes was something we experienced all the time. It was rough, but we survived. We never had any government assistance because my parents always worked. I do remember having government cheese and butter in our house. Having to eat the government products was something I wish I could forget. How could I forget trying to make a grill cheese sandwich with cheese that doesn’t melt and butter that needed to be cut with a machete? As hungry as we were, it didn’t matter how much damage those dairy products did to our bodies. If we were eating, we would deal with the health effects later.

When I started kindergarten, I enjoyed being around other kids, but I didn’t take school seriously. I would talk during nap time, and nap when I should’ve been learning how to count and color. The one thing that excited me about going to school was the meals. I remember standing outside of the school, running to the basement window to see what they were serving us for breakfast, but I wasn’t alone. A lot of other kids ran to that window looking at the aides preparing our breakfast. I looked at those little cups of cereal and that donut in the morning, and then I would be counting down the minutes and hours until it was time for lunch. When the lunch aides came into the classroom with the food on carts, the smell of food distracted me and prevented me from getting any schoolwork done.

I went to Cramer elementary school in kindergarten and first grade twice. Yes, that’s right, twice!!! I didn’t get left back because I couldn’t do the work. I played around in class too much and didn’t do my work. I wanted to be the class clown. Laughing, joking, and playing in school helped me to forget about what was going on in my house. From the time we would get home from school, we had to sit in the house waiting for either my mom or dad to get home so we could go outside to play with the other kids. However, there were times we went out before our parents arrived—me pushing that envelope. I behaved similarly in class where I’d push the teacher’s buttons to see how much I could get away with by being an interruption in class, talking when the teacher said to be quiet.

My living conditions at home were not the only reason I got left back in the first grade. I got kicked out of the lunch program the remainder of the year for being disruptive. I had to leave the school premises in the first grade, I walked to the laundromat and sat in there. Looking back now, it was a little crazy to send a six-year-old out of school alone. Right when lunch was being served, someone escorted me out of the door. I didn’t know how to tell the time. Somehow, I made it back in time. I do not remember my mother saying anything about me being put out of the lunch program. Maybe she was in shock by all this disruptive behavior, and she didn’t know how to handle it. My teacher and the school tried to put me into slow classes, but my mom fought to keep me out of them. If it were not for my mom fighting to keep me out of those slow classes, I do not know where I would be today. Some teachers knew I could do the work, but they didn’t have time to keep worrying and monitoring me all day. There were twenty other kids in the class that needed attention. Perhaps, their thinking was, If he isn’t going to do the work or apply himself, throw him in slow classes.

I had a hard time pronouncing words correctly. It didn’t cross my mind that I had trouble speaking at home or anywhere else. My family members or friends in the streets never said anything about my speech, and kids always said what’s on their mind, or if something isn’t normal, they speak on it. One day my name was called out in class to go to the Speech Mobile twice a week for speech therapy. The Speech Mobile was a big green caravan-looking vehicle that sat outside the school with SPEECH MOBILE written on the side of it. That was embarrassing, getting called out of the class for speaking issues. It wasn’t like everyone had to go to the Speech Mobile. There were probably three of us out of my class that had to take speech therapy. They would have us pronouncing words, trying to correct my speech. It was funny listening to other kids in the Speech Mobile trying to pronounce words until it was my time to sit in the seat. I looked and sounded like a fool struggling to pronounce words with two and three syllables. My mom looked for a better education for me after my two years in first grade. The following year she sent me to St. Joes Catholic School. I started second grade there.

Chapter 2- East Camden

When school was over, I went home. Growing up on Rand Street was a time I would never forget. There were always many boys and girls out in the street playing. It seemed like hundreds of us were outside playing from sunup to sundown. Although we all grew up struggling one way or another, we got away from the struggles while playing outside in the streets.

We found many games to play in the streets: football with cheap nerf footballs, basketball being played on milk crates we found around the corner store then cut out the bottom for the ball to go through, and baseball with a stick and a tennis ball. Our 1st base would be an old album cover we got out of the trash, 2nd base would be a smashed soda can, and 3rd base would be a pizza box we found. We also played kickball, boxing, slap boxing or hard to the body, tops, jailbreak, building clubhouses, swinging from trees, doing back flips on old mattresses we found in the trash, tag whether it was regular tag or help tag, track, doorbell dixie, hide and seek, and catch a girl kiss a girl or catch a girl grind a girl since it wasn’t any real sex going at our age.

Not only did we find games to occupy our time. I ran slow, so I rarely got picked. We also caught bees in the daytime or lightning bugs at night then put them in a bottle. If there weren’t any balls to play sports, we’d pull snot balls off the bushes and throw them on each other, ruining each other’s clothes like we had clothes to destroy.

Although those games were fun, many times kids would get hurt. Someone always got hurt playing football or basketball. We recovered from that and walked it off. Then there were some unfortunate accidents when we played other games like jumping from trees. Several people fell and had broken arms or fractured legs. There was a time playing hide and seek where the pole was home base. Leon and Barry were racing to touch the pole first. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned. They were running full steam to touch the pole which was home base. They collided face to face. My brother had his tooth knocked out and Barry was hurt as well. Nobody went to the hospital to be checked for a concussion or a fractured skull. The game of hide and seek ended that night and both Leon and Barry went in the house to get cleaned up for the next day.

No matter what, Rand Street was my home for me and many others. Barry Wilkins his brother Toney, Louie, Alex, his sister Tina, Shawn his brother Shannon, Troy Johnson, Alvin, his brother Brian (RIP), Alex, his sister Monica, Tarik, Cubby, Jim Martin, his sister Melody, Ms. Lois, Bernard, Dawn, Dana (RIP), Pat, and Nora. Although Rand Street was the place to meet up, there were other people coming around from Boyd Street, Baird blvd and Pfeiffer Street. Barry B, Anthony Baker who we all called Bake, the Marquez brothers, Big head Rob, Pop, Antwan, Bam and Juice all came around from Boyd St. from Pfeiffer Street people like Fish (Carl), Steve, Art, Chioma, Shimi, White boy Jim, Dee, Danny, Cameron, Guy, and Moochie. Baird Blvd Rich Minter, June (RIP) and his brother Jo-El, brothers Bam, Thornton (RIP), and Vince.

While the guys played on one end of the block, the girls had their own thing going on. The girls would be at the other end of the block jumping rope, double Dutch, playing jacks, hopscotch, and there was even a drill team that started up on Rand Street by Ly who was the sister of Don Don and Nu Nu. All the girls from the block were there. Kelia, Shannon, Leah, Tina, Joyce, Linda, Joyvette, Don Don, Nu Nu, Keedy, and many others.

The only time the boys and girls came together to play games was to play kickball during the day, and other games like hide & seek, doorbell dixie, spin the bottle, and my favorites, catch a girl, kiss a girl, or grind a girl, when it got dark. Catch-a-girl games were fun. Even as kids, we all had an attraction for the opposite sex. Although everyone was nervous, it gave us an opportunity to start experiencing what we saw our parents doing and what we saw on television. I had hope that I would be able to catch one of those girls and do my thing. Being young watching the boys and girls kissing for the first time had us all acting like goofballs, laughing at everyone kissing. It was fun, and nobody’s parents ever knew anything.

We also found time to go to the corner store to steal something to help our stomachs.  That was something we did on those days when we were hungry and did not have any money. We would take a pack of cookies, candy, a cake, or a bag of chips.

Barry W. and I would walk up to the pike and steal from the store. One day I came back home from taking some candy and showed Kelia what I had. She went straight to tell my dad. He took off his belt, told me to put my palms together and started to beat my hands with his belt. Kelia was always starting trouble.

As we got older, the games began to change. We still played football and basketball in the streets. Now we have started to play games in the house. We played with our electric football board which was a football field that plugged into the wall. The field vibrated when a button was pushed, and the vibration from the electricity moved the plastic players down the field. Not long after that, we started to play video games on the television with Atari and Intellivision cartridges. Atari was the first video game I could remember playing. Later, Mom got Intellivision, which had better graphics than Atari, for me and my brother. I’m not sure where she found the money to purchase it. We didn’t care. We were just happy we got it.

Once the arcade games hit the scene, the kids were addicted. Most of the arcade games were placed in the back of the stores and it would cost us a quarter to play one game. There would be lines of kids in the back of the stores waiting their turn to get on the arcade games. Most of us didn’t have quarters but we quickly fixed that problem. We started to make slugs and put those in the arcade games. Slugs were nickels that we flattened with a hammer until it reached the size of a quarter. We all did that on Rand Street for us to go play the arcade games.

Not having quarters for video games were the least of our worries being poor. We also didn’t have most of the ingredients needed to make some of the dishes. We would be out of sugar, flour, or salt, having to go next door to ask Ms. Scott (RIP) or run across the street over to Barry’s house to ask his mom, Ms. Ann (RIP), to borrow those items. Barry was forced to do the same thing. His mom would send him over to our house for sugar, flour, and to use our iron when theirs broke. It was embarrassing asking for those things.

There were many days we sat around outside talking about what we would do if we had some money. It would be small things like some toys, clothes, or being able to go buy some candy from the corner store. Everyone would be outside playing with holes in our shoes or holes in our pants. It was rare for the guys to have a shape-up for their hairline. We all would be wolfen. Then when someone brought out something to eat like a sandwich or brought a bag of chips from the store, we acted like vultures attacking a dead carcass. Friends would ask for some candy, chips, or a piece of sandwich. We would say we weren’t opening it until we got into the house, which was a lie. We said that so we didn’t have to share.

We had our good days and our bad days as kids. Sugar kept us happy for the most part. There would be lots of sugar being consumed whether it was from cookies, candy, or Kool-Aid. We had many penny candy stores locally. We’d go there with $1.00 and would come out with a brown bag full of items to make our teeth rot--the penny fish; shoestrings; gum; and chocolate chip, oatmeal, lemon, and windmill cookies. Everyone loved the soft windmill cookies. We call them soft. The proper wording was stale. We didn’t care if the cookies were fresh or stale., we tore them bad boys up.

Although we didn’t have much, that didn’t stop our desire to want more. We all had ambition to find work or try to do something for people to make money. Rarely, you would see people hanging around begging or expecting something if they didn’t work for it. To make money as kids most of the boys would cut grass in the summer then shovel snow in the winter.  We also carried customer bags to their cars from the supermarket around the corner Acme that didn’t allow for the carts to be taken away from the store. Customers had to keep the cart behind the metal pillars which prevented the carts from being stolen.

Once we found out that the customers at Acme were giving kids anything up to a $1.00 or sometimes $2.00 for carrying bags to their cars, we all were up at Acme trying to make some money. All the boys from Rand Street were at Acme: Barry W, Barry B, Alvin, Brian, Alex, Leon, and me. We would ask someone if they needed help carrying their bags. The ones that said yes we helped, and they gave us whatever change they had on them or a $1.00 bill. There weren’t any plastic bags. We only had big brown paper bags for groceries during this time.

When my dad heard about it, he said, I better not see or hear about you going around there begging again. I asked, How in the hell is that begging? Well, I sure wouldn’t dare say that to him, but I thought about it, along with, "since it is begging, how about you give me some money? I don’t have anything." But what I said, carefully monitoring my tone, since I knew the wrong tone or wrong word would get my head knocked off was, I am not begging, I would ask someone if they needed help carrying the bag to the car, and when they said yes, I carried their bags, and they gave me change or even a dollar sometimes.

His response was, That is begging, so do not take your ass up there again.

I shook my head and didn’t take my ass back up there again because my dad didn’t play around. He was a professional ass-whipper. My dad would always discipline us in my house, that’s why we were scared of him.

If Leon, Kelia, and I were in the living room and heard him opening the door, all three of us would run into the bedroom. We tried to stay out of his sight. When he was drunk—every day, especially on payday—he would have different mood swings. If he wasn’t drunk, he would be uptight. When he had a little to drink in him, he would loosen up some and be somewhat playful, other times, he might be upset. We never knew what to expect from him at any given time.

One evening, we were in the house—I had to be about five or six years old, and Leon was roughly eight or nine years old—my dad must have gone to the bathroom with no shoes on. When he got out of the bathroom, he asked me and Leon to come here. We went to see him and stood at the bathroom door. He asked, Who pissed on the floor?

I said, I didn’t do it.

Leon then said, I didn’t do it.

My dad then asked, Well, what is on this floor?

We said, We don’t know.

He reached down and swiped his bare hands across the wet floor near the toilet in the piss and asked, What does this smell like?

We said, Piss.

He whipped our asses then proceeded to say, Since nobody knows how it got there, y’all both get y’all asses beat.  we got a beating for that. Oh, he didn’t discriminate Kelia was getting her ass beat by him as well.

One Saturday afternoon, we were planning to go to the store called Clover. Clover was a retail store like Walmart is today. We would go there on a Saturday after my parents got paid. That was one of the few places we went together as a family. My dad wanted all of us in front of the house until it was time to go to Clover. Leon and I stood out front waiting as we were told. We didn’t want any problems from my dad. Kelia, on the other hand, did what she wanted to do. She didn’t like to listen at times. Some would’ve thought that she was hard of hearing. When my mom and dad came out of the house and we all started walking to the car, my dad asked, Where is Kelia?

I told him that Kelia walked around Marlton Pike to Gino’s with her friend Tracie. Gino’s was a fast-food spot that had burgers and that’s where Kentucky fried chicken started before it was solely Kentucky Fried Chicken. We all walked to the car and took a seat waiting for Kelia to come back. Time was steadily ticking away while my dad got more and more angry waiting for Kelia to show up. My dad kept looking out the rear-view mirror for Kelia to turn the corner and he wasn’t saying a word, but we could see he was viably upset. Soon, as my dad put the car in gear about to pull off. He saw Kelia and Tracie turn the corner.  Kelia came walking or she was probably even skipping to the car as happy as she was.

Dad asked, Didn’t I tell you to wait in front of the house because we are about to leave?

Kelia said, Yes, and before she could say another word, Dad back slapped her. He clearly knocked that smile completely off her face.

Leon and I were sitting in the back seat, laughing our asses off. We were not laughing out loud, just those smirky laughs seeping out when someone was trying to hold in a loud laugh. We almost lost it and let out a burst of laugh, but we kept our composure as Kelia sat there face numb feeling embarrassed. She didn’t burst out in cry, instead she took it in like a trooper and allowed only a few tears to drop from her face. I know that smack hurt from the way it sounded. Kelia didn’t disobey him again. Dad disciplined us like that to keep us in line. We didn’t appreciate it when we were younger, but as we got older, we know he helped shape us into who we are today—well-mannered and respectable adults.

Chapter 3 – Transition

While at St. Joseph, I noticed other kids in the band, playing basketball for the school or being active. I decided to try playing instruments. First, I tried the trumpet then quit. I told my mom that I wanted to play the drums instead. My mom made sure she got me the trumpet and drums. Ironically, I quit them both. I never wanted to put the time in and practice. Quitting was gratifying and convenient. I wish I had developed better work habits.

My teachers at St. Joseph would tell my mom that I had the potential to be a B student. My work showed me doing C to D level work. The work was not difficult for me, it was the other problems that kept me from being a B student, like having one uniform or me going to school with no lunch. What upset me was seeing how clean and neat the other kids’ clothes were. I became angry everyday living like that, and I took that attitude to school. When you are looking like a bum and feeling defeated and hopeless, you think that everyone is focused on you or talking about you. When the teacher called on me in class to go up to the board, I would think that she called me up so she could embarrass me because of my appearance, or she thought I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t want to be on display in front of the class with my dirty clip-on tie while wearing my blue greyhound sneakers which were knock off Kangaroos my dad bought from Fayva’s Footwear shoe store.

I made a lot of friends at St. Joes, Orlando, Sal, Audrianna, Monica, Barbara, Spike, Leroy Johnson (RIP), Eddie (Snoop) Ross (RIP), Julio, Rachael, James, Lou Guess, Noel, Waleska (Moya), Chanique, Bruce Pritchett, Kena, and a few others. Public schools provided us with breakfast and lunch every day, but at St. Joes, we had to carry our own lunch from home. The kids at the school regularly brought a drink and a snack along with their sandwiches. Some of the people I mentioned watched my back and shared their food with me when they saw me with nothing to eat. They were not selfish in any way, but I understood they couldn’t break bread with me every day. They had three course meals. All I could say to myself is must be nice. As my mouth watered.

Some kids had great lunches. They would come to school with half hoagies, meaty sandwiches with cheese, chips, Tastykake, etc. For Leon, Kelia, and myself, it was a struggle at lunchtime. Somedays we had nothing while other days it would be a bologna sandwich with no cheese, or egg salad sandwich. We had no other options to choose from. I pulled out my egg salad sandwich like it was the new cheeseburger. As I stated, sometimes my friends shared. Orlando gave me half of his pepperoni and cheese sandwich on a few occasions. That sandwich was off the chain. I went home thinking about that thing. I told my mom and on those rare occasions, when she had a few extra dollars, she would get that combination for me. I still eat pepperoni and cheese sandwiches ’til this day. The more I ate egg salad, the more I started to get sick of eating it. It came to a point where I couldn’t eat it anymore. I really had to give it a rest.

I would go to school and play around all day, not focusing. I wasn’t one of the crazy kids that would be bullying people. I just loved to sit in class and joke about what people were wearing or how they looked—like I had room to talk.